Apache status says stopped but still httpd process running

Question

I am new to Apache, the server Apache status stopped but still the process is running. The web page is serving properly. When i tried to restart the process, it's not. I believe the parent process is dead but still the child process is serving the web page. Please find the output below

# service httpd status
httpd is stopped
#ps -ef | grep httpd
apache    2525 11597  0 Apr14 ?        00:05:05 /usr/sbin/httpd
apache    2526 11597  0 Apr14 ?        00:05:12 /usr/sbin/httpd
apache    2527 11597  0 Apr14 ?        00:05:14 /usr/sbin/httpd

# netstat -antp | grep LISTEN  
tcp        0      0 :::443               :::*             LISTEN      2936/httpd
tcp        0      0 :::6379              :::*             LISTEN      882/redis-server *
tcp        0      0 :::80                :::*             LISTEN      2936/httpd

Is this any problem with Apache process? How I can troubleshoot to run the Apache process normally? Do i need to restart my server to debug this issue?

Solution

It seems a bit chaotic. There is an apache parent process with pid 2936 listening on port 80 and 443. And there are 3 child processes 2525, 2526 and 2527 whose parent process is 11597. I would kill all those processes and then start apache again cleanly. So to them softly (not kill -9) do:

kill 2525 2526 2527 11597 2936

Then check again with ps -ef and start apache fresh:

service httpd start

Comments

[sridhar raj]

Thanks chaos. I need to get approval for site down time. I will try and let you know soon.

[sridhar raj]

ya, It's done. I killed the child process and started again. It is working fine now.